sail_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME #1

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TEST DRIVE MEME #1

1. now it's fun to wake up in a strange chateau

[you wake up.

it doesn't matter where you were before. going to bed? dying? opening the door to face a great evil? same result. you wake up in a soft bed with starched sheets in a cool, darkened room, sunlight peeking out from behind thick curtains. maybe you're alone; maybe you aren't. maybe you immediately notice the folded paper on the bedside table near your head. if you don't, you better fix that real quick: you won't be able to even open the door before you read it.

the note itself is written in a neat hand on white card stock; there is a stylized logo of a ship with the words SERENA ETERNA printed underneath. the note reads as follows:

Dear Passenger(s),

As your cruise director, it is my great honor to welcome you aboard the Serena Eterna, your destination for fun and adventure! We know you could have chosen any cruise line for your vacation, and we're very grateful you chose ours! On behalf of the Captain, I would like to assure each and every passenger that will we do whatever it takes to fulfill all your needs and desires during your journey with us.

At your earliest possible convenience, please attend the mandatory lifeboat drill by the end of the day. I'm sure everyone is very eager to get started on all the fun and sun, but safety always comes first! You can find your life jacket in your cabin's closet; carry it to your assigned muster station on deck one, where I will take you through the drill. If you can't find me in the crowd, just look for the gal with the winning smile!

See You Real Soon!

Sincerely,
Gal Friday

you walk to deck one. you have no other choice: every time you try to step in a direction some unseen being considers "not towards deck one," you find your legs no longer move, staying stock still, frozen. whether compelled quickly by curiosity, or delayed by pure stubbornness, the result is the same, and you are left milling around with other similarly curious or stubborn people.

you see someone in uniform near the front of the crowd. she seems to be a gal, but is missing the winning smile, along with most of her other features. she seems to see you, though, rushing to your side and placing a lei around your neck with great formality. a voice, cheery but artificial, sees to come from nowhere and everywhere.]

Welcome aboard! We're so glad to have you!

[you touch the lei. rooster feathers, lotus seeds, and a carved circle of something white and hard, linked onto a silk string.]

2. messing with my mind was fun at the time

[freshly lei'd, your legs are forced to lead out onto the deck and towards your muster station. the same woman is there, carrying a clipboard. this time, she introduces herself as Gal Friday, the cruise director, before immediately going into the muster drill spiel. it is very boring, and you are not allowed to move, except when you are required to show you know how to put your life vest on. you could try to not do this, but Friday will move to stand in front of you very closely and just. look in your direction until such a time that you decide to do it. and I'm sure your fellow passengers want you to just get on with it, too.

but, once it ends? she reiterates her desire to welcome you aboard. and, then, you're free.

well, free to move about the ship at your own leisure, of course. which is a kind of free, and probably the best one you can hope for. you could try to escape, maybe, if you have the means to; Friday certainly won't be one to stop you. that's what the barrier is for, after all.

but, wouldn't you much rather have fun?

the buffet is full. the pool is open. the casino jingles and chimes.

welcome aboard.]

3. lots of mystery in the history of the devils I knew

[you were never alone.

a few days have passed since you first arrived on the Serena Eterna. perhaps you've made yourself a little routine, and settled in a bit. or maybe you haven't done that at all. either way, you're here, and it looks like somebody is pretty pissed off about it.

it starts small. sometimes nearby plates skid off tables, or a pool chair upends while you're walking next to it. and sometimes that chair is aimed right at your head. objects are moving with quickly increasing frequency, and a wide variety of styles: some are dropped, or pushed, and others and others are tossed, but a few of the items are thrown, with great force and odd accuracy. if Friday is around during the lighter moments, she simply titters and cleans up whatever mess is made. if a pot of soup sails off the buffet line and nearly drenches you in boiling minestrone, she simply walks away.

and then there's the voices. hundreds, maybe thousands, calling out. not all are intelligible English, but you seem to understand them anyway. some sound scared, or angry. some are screams, others whispers. some sound entirely strange, while others are achingly familiar. and they're all saying the same exact thing:

Get Out.]

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[ He didn't follow her. Rather, Zouichi raised his phone and flipped it towards Clarke. ShipTalk was open on its screen, like a silent siren. ]

This is the only program on the thing. It looks simple enough, but I have to wonder if it actually works. I've read that the networks on ships like these were... spotty.

[ How were the networks on spooky ghost ships? Possibly more than spotty? ]

I'd like to test it out, but it looks like you can't just message anyone.

( right. right. the devices that looked like phones, but that clarke still held out a faint hope would somehow be able to hail the mainland. or some passing spaceship. anyone, really. from a pocket under her lifevest, she pulls her own phone, fiddles with it until opening shiptalk and taking a quick assessment of its functions.

seems like a closed network, and definitely worth testing out. )

Yes, okay. Sorry. That's actually a really good idea. Do we need user I.D.s?

Ah. Hold on a second -- it didn't ask me for one.

[ And indeed, on second glance, there didn't seem to be any options for user profile. ]

Try my name, 'Zouichi'.

[ He spelled it out for her, hoping the program was smart enough to not need some arcane friendcode handshaking process. One could only hope. ]

( following directions easily enough, she punches each individual letter into an address line pulled up on the app, along with a brief message before hitting send.

with a fwip of message sent, and the pleasant ding of message received on his device, under the name clarke reads: )

What do you think chances are these are being monitored?

[ That got a little laugh out of him, albeit brief. ]

Almost certain. But as long as it's the only option...

I'll head towards the other side of the ship. If I cut out, well... we'll know how far these things go. Sound good?

Yeah, that sounds fine.

( mostly clarke's just relieved to be doing something. it's a situation that feels very similar to being locked in a strange, stark white room, and she'd never been one to sit still and twiddle her thumbs. it feels good to have some sort of actionable plan, even if it's just getting the lay of the land. er, boat. there's no trace of land out towards the horizon and that's a different type of concerning.

she let's zouichi leave, and gives it a little time before sending another message. )

How do you think they made us move against our will?

Psychic powers?

[ Could dry humor travel through ancient smartphone apps? Maybe. Either way, Zouichi wasn't entirely joking, but -- ]

There are substances out there that can make someone more susceptible to suggestion. But on the scale of what we're seeing here, I don't think it's likely.

Do you remember what you were doing before this?

Dying, I think.

( succinct, with no other explanation. but it may help to place that really horrific sunburn she'd had on her face a few moments ago. radiation burns are nasty. )

So, mind control. It doesn't necessarily have to be psychic powers or drugs, I've seen neural implants do something similar. But I can't see, and don't feel any sort of incision.

What were you doing before this?

[ There was a brief pause. ]

I was in space. I have some questions, to put it mildly.

[ He sort of figured that most of his fellow passengers wouldn't believe him on that one, but hey. If Clarke was familiar with neural implants, maybe he'd be pleasantly surprised.

...Besides, it was actually the most believable way to phrase the situation, which had been totally fucked. ]

And you're all right now?

[ That would make even less sense. ]

( familiar with neural implants and actually born in space. and sorta-died trying to send a group of her friends back out of the atmosphere to save them from a nuclear deathwave. she's not even batting an eye, though immediately curious how he got to space and what he was doing there. )

I'm alive.

( obviously. begrudgingly. tbd if anything else about this scenario is alright yet, but it's nice of him to ask. )

Make it to the other side of the ship yet?

No. I'm

[ uh ]

Seeing ghosts.

There's some kind of activity going on at a stage area. There's music and the sound of applause, but I don't see anyone here. I'm going to see if the instruments are rigged up somehow.

( red flags. all of that is red flags. )

I don't think you should touch anything.

Too late. I touched it.

[ what was impulse control ]

The music's stopped.

( rip her blood pressure. )

That's not ominous at all. But nothing's exploded?

Nope. Looks like the show's over.

Everything just stopped all of a sudden. I'm not finding any mechanisms for moving objects around here, either. If this is someone's idea of a joke, they're going pretty far to pull it off.

[ Hmm. Hmm. ]

I'm going to move on. I can hear the sound of water, anyway.

You should absolutely move on, and maybe not touch anything else.

We're on a boat. Surrounded by water. Or are you hearing something else?

No, it's churning. The wake of the ship.

Nothing on the horizon but more ocean. But I guess that's no surprise.

Not really. But still disappointing.

Before waking up here, what were you doing in space?

I was in a fight.
But I wasn't in immediate danger at the time. And if something happened... I should have some memory of it.

I don't understand the purpose of bringing us here, if there was one.

I don't either. That Gal Friday person acted like they've done us a favor by bringing us here, but I didn't ask for it. I don't think any of us did. And I think they know that, and it's just a matter of time before they tell us what they want.

( er... backtrack a second. )

Fighting with other people? Or something else.

Before I answer that, I need to ask something myself.

What year is it?

It was 2149 for me.

( what year is it here? who even knows. this doesn't look like her apocalypse, everything is too clean. )

That's kind of what I figured.

The year was 3006 where I was. I was fighting a terrorist -- it's a long story. She's not here.

( how does one politely say "oh, i don't care about your terrorist, i'm mostly just relieved humanity still exists 800+ years on from when we almost all died in my world"? ...oh, ya just don't. )

That's... a big span of time to be dragging people through space. Whoever's running this game has some serious reach.

[ WEEEELL... he probably ought to avoid mentioning how many humans still existed. Not only was it seemingly irrelevant here, but it was depressing. ]

There are other possibilities. However, I'm not sure how much I like any of them, either.

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skaikru - 2022-02-17 07:09 (UTC) - Expand

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